Towers in the Park, Bungalows in the Garden: Peripheral Densities, Metropolitan Scales and the Political Cultures of Post-Suburbia

In this paper I will disentangle the real-existing suburbia from some of its enduring myths. I will do this mostly through a discussion of densities. Based on international experiences but also encouraged by recent developments in Canadian suburbs, I will argue that densities in suburbs have always been mixed and diverse. But the emphasis on a particular form of US-style individualized suburbanization has led to a focus on a cultural politics of social conservatism, property ownership and privilege which has obscured not just alternative social and built forms in suburbia, but has disempowered other, more progressive, labour and collective consumption-oriented and social justice-seeking forms of everyday suburbanism and the politics that result from it. It has also obscured some of the pathways through which post-suburban metropolitanism has to find solutions to some of the most pressing social, economic and environmental issues we confront in urban regions today.